Thursday, March 26, 2015

I know many want to just turn the page on last season and look forward to the big class. But with the concerns about the Big East TV ratings and only having one team in the Sweet 16, I wanted to make a couple of notes on the Top 100 Big East players in Value Add.

Obviously one issue is that the conference does not have much NBA talent. I was sitting in press row at the Big East tournament while Villanova beating Xavier, and the reporter next to me asked how many of Nova's players would make the NBA. He seemed shocked when I answered that I did not think any of them were NBA-level players and that Kris Dunn was the only guy I thought had a decent chance though there would probably be a surprise or two.

One other note is that when you look at the good players we had, there really were a ton of Seniors. In that way, the Big East really looked like an incredible mid-major. I don't mean that we were not a Power Conference, because a No. 2 RPI clearly puts us there, but the conference may need the breakthrough to be with a senior laiden team beating some younger teams from the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten in the future to make the big run.

Finally, I do want to once again thank the seniors. I know even our fans were critical when I was calculating Derrick Wilson so high this year, but I don't know what else the kid could have done. That assist explosion in the Big East tournament helped his finish as the 17th best assist to turnover guy in the country at 150/51. When you consider how little scoring we had, that is even more impressive. The kid was worth more than twice as much this year (3.31 points per game for the 33rd best player in the Big East) than he was in his other three seasons COMBINED.

Matt Carlino had just broken the top 100 before the injury, and I still wonder if we might have put together a .500 season and a bid somewhere without the disruption of losing him. When a player is out he gets a zero for each game, which is why he dropped to 154th by the end, but certainly appreciate him coming here for his final season.

Ironically Juan Anderson ranked one spot behind Wilson at 34th in the conference, and Duane Wilson was next at 35th. So we had only one of the top 32 players, but the others contributed. Value Add had Juan as a very solid player the last two seasons who I thought Buzz should have played more.

As much as I hate not having a good senior night coming next year, the good news is that means we will be betting better and better if Wojo holds his recruits together.

The stuff I wrote on Breitbart leading up to the tournament laid out how you really do need three legit stars (as Al McGuire always said) and in that piece I picked Utah and Michigan State as the two teams with the biggest potential to make surprise runs, and also noted in the same piece that Villanova was the most unlikely to do so of the 1- and 2-seeds based on not having three big stars.

Obviously, Wilson, Anderson and Carlino did not give MU a trio with a chance to be a championship team, but I believe they kept the torch alive by playing true Marquette hustle basketball that probably showed enough to the incoming kids to keep them wanting to play for Wojo.

It looks like between Duane and the incoming class we could easily be building toward the three stars we need.